


And a brother is born for adversity

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Kings
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Political Animals - Freeform, machinations, sibling fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and William in cross-section.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And a brother is born for adversity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Alona! I hope you enjoy! Title is from Proverbs 17:17.

She sits, quiet, staring at the crown in her hand that is not on her son’s head and up at her husband, returning from death. 

She knew he wasn’t dead.

She feels the metal cut into her hands as he accepts it from her, and she wonders if her brother knows this pain. She truly thinks of the pain of holding the edged metal and wonders if William could actually stand it. He didn’t want to be king. The power behind the throne was always much more appealing, but she knows her husband’s hand better than anyone else.

She cannot think where the path deviated, cannot trace the lines of William’s cruelty and anger, she cannot see how he went from her brother to the man who tried to kill her husband, who corrupted her son. She remembers promises made and the have been shattered as though made of finest blown glass, spread apart and cutting everything it touches.

*****

“Your husband is mad.”

William almost never speaks with the height and elegance that Rose cultivates, that she requires her entire family to cultivate. He prefers things simply spoken, so when he comes to see her in her study, the attitude of a monarch denied about him, she can only stand up from her desk to greet him, pressing her mouth to his cheek. “You look well, although the hang of your coat is unflattering. I could send for a tailor.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. Do you know what he’s doing? Do you? He’s _giving_ away pieces of this kingdom – your kingdom – to Gath.” William stalks about the room. It gives him the air of an incredibly displeased chicken. He lacks the grace, the weight of power her husband carries. She thinks, for one incredibly uncharitable moment, that Jack has inherited that walk from her side of the family. 

She wipes that thought from her mind, then. “It’s been made mention to me, but I do not interfere in the King’s politics.”

“Cut the perfect little wife routine, sister. This is meant to be _war_.” He looks so upset, a child whose favorite game has been cut in half. He’s always been this way, from the time they were children. She wonders when she lost sympathy for him, for this brother who she always cherished when they were small. “I need this war to continue! If you knew anything about the economics of the situation, you would understand.”

“I do not interfere at court,” she says, then, sternly, because she doesn’t. It is an unspoken deal. She gets free reign with the family, with table, with the raising of their children, and she doesn’t tell him how to rule. It’s an unspoken arrangement that keeps the entire kingdom stable. People think they can get to Silas through her, but she is a different kind of steel. Her suggestions come in the night, in his dreams, in his divine hallucinations. God is his inspiration but she is too, and Silas knows it only in the press of her hands when he says something she agrees with, in the smooth rush of her kisses when he needs to stop speaking.

“Tell him if he keeps this up he’s going to destroy this country,” William snarls and is about to blow his way out of her office, but she reaches for his wrist and grips it.

He looks down at her hand on his wrist and back at her face, and he’s about to open his mouth again when she speaks, “You would do this to me?”

He just laughs, then. “This is the devil you chose, Rose. Don’t pretend you’re innocent in all of this.”

*****

She presses down the white fabric against her slim waist, breathing. Silas is the most promising general to ever begin to unite Gilboa in time immemorial. The old ways, the clannish conquering of territory, the fear she grew up feeling sinks away from her when she’s in his presence. Even this wedding is new, special, joyous in ways she cannot describe and words have always been her ally in all things.

It’s because she, more than anyone, remembers fear.

William pushes the door to the bridal suite open and bridesmaids tilt their way out of the room, slipping past him, the brother who commands the queen’s time and affection so completely. Silas isn’t jealous, because Silas is never jealous of anyone (except maybe God’s affection, which he hoards like a dragon hoards gold). But Rose feels a burst of affection when William takes her hand. “You have to get him to agree to attack the Eastern border towns,” is the first thing that William says, and it shakes her, cold.

“Not even a _you look beautiful, Rosie_ ,” she scolds, wishing that the feeling twisting her gut would fade. She knows she sounds a little playful but the sentiment is fake, she doesn’t feel playful. She feels cold. Cold and used.

“I don’t need to compliment you, you know you look beautiful, so just focus. Tonight, he’ll be soft, easy pickings. So repeat after me. Attack the Eastern border towns.” William lets go of her hands suddenly, shaking off her fear as if it was nothing. She does not mutter his words back at him. She sits there, silent and impassive, and knowing that she has been used and she has agreed to be used. There is nothing in this room that she was not in full concordance with. He sees the coldness on her face and he snarls, then, looking nothing like the brother she tries to freeze in her head. “You agreed to this, sister. I told you that you would be the most powerful woman, a woman without fear, and you agreed to this on my terms.”

William has always been good at terms, but she is better. She turns to her vanity and applies the pressed powder to her face like armor, translucent and pale armor that swaths her in beauty. He leaves and she considers his words.

But that night, after the wedding and after the bedding and after Silas mutters his pleasure like a benediction, his love for her like a balm against her sore and wounded heart, pressing into the places that William abandoned for favor with his new company, for guns and toys and the ceaseless patter of _war_ , she leans in and thinks of William’s words, carved into her brain.

She thinks of the power, of the game she plays here, of a man in love with a woman who he believes was simply in the right place at the right time, a woman who he thinks did not plan their charade of a courtship from start to finish, a woman who he thinks is innocent of the wages of war and the toll they can take on a man’s psyche. And she thinks of William, and his face when they were children, and how he used to hide her in the basement when the clans would begin to fight and the little girls were the most valuable plunder, and she whispers, “Have you considered the Eastern border towns, Silas?”

He turns to look at her, his eyes heavy with lust and satiation and peace, and he touches her face, and she hates William.

*****

“I don’t want to.”

She says it as she presses back behind William, and William moves forward just slightly, his body blocking hers from view. The men – from the west, they’re not kin or clan or tribe, they’re the bloody westerners, laugh at the words, and Rose reaches for her brother’s hand. 

The clasp hands for a long minute, and William doesn’t let go until they tear them apart, and he’s screaming _Rosie, Rosie, Rosie_ -

She sinks her teeth into an arm and she hears a burst of fire, and when she looks up, William is holding a gun. The man who was holding her isn’t anymore, he’s slumped to the ground, and William turns to throw up. It’s an unfortunate mistake, because Rose can see the rest of them assessing the risk, so she runs to grab the gun and stands over her brother who is still dry-heaving onto the floor of the basement. She doesn’t know where the gun came from, but she knows the feel of it, their father taught William to make them, has been teaching him for three years now.

They laugh at her, at the little bitch protecting her brother, but her brother protected her, so she shoots one of them in the shoulder and snarls that she didn’t miss. Her aim is better than William’s.

After they leave they cling to each other, waiting, and she sets the gun aside. He looks at it differently, like a key, and she feels a heavy disappointment that he couldn’t protect her better, that she had to be the one to stand up to them like that. It makes her never want to touch one again. Her battles are better fought with words, she thinks, not weapons.

He picks up the gun and stares at it. “I made this,” he finally says, and holds it close to him.

*****

“William-“ she cries out, stumbling and falling down, and she suddenly wants to cry at the pain in her knees. The light bounces, blinding as she squints up, refracting through her tears. She manages not to cry, though. Big girls don’t, they don’t cry even when they’re scared or hurt. 

But then her brother is there, helping her up. “It’s okay,” he says, smiling, holding her hand as they walk across the backyard. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

She smiles up at him, because he’s just a little taller than she is, and he promises, “I’ll take care of you forever.”

She holds his hand and squeezes it tight, and believes him.


End file.
